Scientists Tweak Bugs to Zap Disease

By

Gautam Naik

October 31, 2011

In the first open-air trial of its type, an army of lab-made mosquitoes carrying a "death gene" managed to wipe out most of a test population of native mosquitoes on a Caribbean island, a novel but potentially risky technique for fighting tropical diseases such as dengue fever.

In the 2010 trial, conducted on Grand Cayman island, researchers released 3.3 million male mosquitoes that had been genetically altered in such a way that they were born sterile, meaning they can't have viable offspring. They mated with...